


Born To be Yours - English

by Miryel



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: After infinity war, Angst, INFINITY WAR SPOILER, Ironspider - Freeform, M/M, Past, Starker, peter x tony - Freeform, spoiler - Freeform, tony x peter - Freeform, young!starker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-03 16:18:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16329383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miryel/pseuds/Miryel
Summary: You disappeared and you reappeared, in a world where people are dressed like Aunt May in the photos of when she was young. Where the Avengers do not exist, yet; where you were not born and where Tony, by a twist of fate, is your age or maybe a little more.Funny, ridiculous.A snap of fingers has separated you from him, and now you have it in front of you rejuvenated for a lifetime.(English it's not my primare language, so sorry if i've made some mistakes)





	1. Years From Now

(English isn't my primary language, so I tryed to translate my mini-long. I Really hope it's understandable. If you have any advace, please let me know! I'm ready to improve myself alway <3)

 

You have been swept away; your body disintegrated into a thousand small pieces impossible to reassemble, letting the void take your place and never return again.

He is there, in front of the coffee machine, and it is days that you wonder if you would have ever met him, yet despite having no doubt, you almost hoped it would not happen.

Hands in his pockets, a white T-shirt of A Clockwork Orange , a red checked shirt to make him a jacket, the absorbed and unconscious expression of a teenager with too many things to think about, waiting for his drink to be dispensed.

"Tony?", you ask uncertainly, and he turns to look at you and raises an eyebrow. As always, as usual, as if it were the switch that raises a wall of defense.

Hold your breath. You should not have done it, Peter .

"Have we ever met before?".

Is He asking if you know him? What an idiot question, to be honest.

"No, you do not know me yet," you say. You smile. You wouldn't want to but you do it. It's stronger than you.

You disappeared and you reappeared, in a world where people are dressed like Aunt May in the photos of when she was young. Where the Avengers do not exist, yet, where you were not born and where Tony, by a twist of fate, is your age or maybe a little more.

Funny, ridiculous .

A snap of fingers has separated you from him, and now you have it in front of you rejuvenated for a lifetime.

It makes no sense, it almost makes you laugh, if it's not that you're not understanding anything, what's going on.

They told you, the S.H.I.E.L.D. - after they found you in a cloud of radiation and they studied you as if you were an alien just landed on earth - that what happened is a temporal paradox; that you're not dead, you've only been moved to a different time, as if you had parked waiting to go home.

In short, you are in the past and you have no idea how it is possible but, after all, since that spider bites you, it is difficult for something to surprise you again.

There is only to be patience, they told you; that you just have to take care not to say too much about yourself, because the less they know about the future, the better it will be for everyone.

Even a single misstep can change the fate of the future from where you come from.

Or, as you prefer to call it: your present.

In this reality, Tony Stark is not one anyone.

He is the bored and silent son of a man who is unloved, who builds arms and sells them, who works with those people only because it is better to have him as an ally rather than an enemy.

Tony runs for S.H.I.E.L.D. from time to time; he returns from school and does not know what to do and you ... you could not help but call him by name, when you crossed him through the corridors and you recognized him.

Short hair, not even half a trace of a beard. It's the features that betray him, like his long eyelashes and his chestnut-colored eyes that burn with the light you could never recognize, when it shines like that.

"Ah, you must be that guy comes from the future. Or so you say. My father talked about it recently with colleagues ".

He says bored. Not from you, but from life.

It seems devoid of stimulation, devoid of dreams, does not even seem the same person you know in your present.

You miss your Tony, and that one you have in front of you is unjustly permeated by an inconsistent desire to live, soiled by a strong dissatisfaction in the face, disguised as arrogance.

Not so different from the man who will be, but not even the same.

"So you know me. In the future,I mean", he continues and you can not talk about it. You can not say anything. You curse yourself for calling him but it was so instinctive, so much that you wonder how you could not do it.

"Just ... of sight," you whisper, carrying a lock of hair behind your ear, in a gesture that reveals the fact that you're lying, "I can not say much more. You know, I don't want to ch- "

"Change the course of events, I guess" he interrupts, sighing and looking up at the sky. Perhaps considering that fact unjust; perhaps only because he finds it ridiculous.

You nod, because you want to leave. You have to go away. Move away before doing damage, before falling in love with him once again.

Tony stays still and you overcome him. You're safe, Peter. You are safe. A few more steps, despite his gaze on you, he is studying you without respite, and will pass. This too will pass.

"Peter?".

He just opened his mouth and you seemed to receive a shot in the middle of the shoulder blades.

You block yourself. You do not even look at him. Close your eyes and you're feeling like you're dying.

Would you like to dissolve, once again, this time forever and pretend that it did not do so badly.

"It's your name, is not it? I heard it around. The boy of the future, his name is Peter , they said. "

Stay still, assimilate those words with the only awareness that you should not have turned around; not with that smile, then. You should not have spoken to him the sweetest tone in the world, and despite the abysmal difference from Tony Stark of this present and that of yours, it makes you palpitate the same and your heart is his again. Perhaps it is only the fault of the idea of what it will become.

Of what you will become.

Hey, do you know that love binds us, in my present? , you would like to tell him and luckily you do not.

"Yes, that's my name," and maybe I should have even lied about the name., you think.

"See you around then, Peter," he says simply, and raises a hand to greet you.

I hope not, you think, but not for real.

"Yes, see you around."

...

You have stopped strolling around the S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters just because you have a boundless fear of meeting him. And although you feel the desire to do it, you also know it's wrong. Totally.

deleterious; exhausting. For both.

You saw him again just a couple more times, maybe three, slipping away from his looks and the questions that vibrated between his lips, and you ran away stopping in the bud that his attempt to give it to you.

You tried to eclipse, not to go out too often from the room that you have assigned, where sometimes someone comes to ask you some questions, sometimes personal, sometimes medical.

You just decided to talk as little as possible and spend your time alone, reading books and listening to music.

And you wait. You wait to go back, and that's it and you're definitely a landslide to wait. You've always been.

Then they knock at the door, and it is definitely the umpteenth medical team that came to interview you, in order to understand who the hell you are.

You open the door and Tony smiles and you feel trapped.

A smile that says you can not escape forever, Peter.

Please do not do it ... , you would like to tell him.

He is holding a pile of clothes; pants, shirts and a red hooded sweatshirt and other things that you can not recognize at first glance.

He does not say hello. No need. Just like in your present.

A glance is enough, and nothing more. It always worked like that with him.

"You need new clothes, they told me. So they even thought to ask me to lend you mine. Sometimes they also have some brilliant ideas".

It's absurd how certain ordinary things fuck you from inside, and you feel like dying as if those words had pinned you with the sole intent of hurting you.

Only God knows how many times you have worn his clothes, wrapped up in the scent of his cologne - Who knows how many you have changed, over time ... What you are wearing now is still different, but so yours -; how many times have you slept with his shirts on and how many times he have slipped away from you to make you wear only his skin.

You have a chill and close your eyes. There is something terribly erotic in those images that pass you in front of you, and something far too innocent in his propose to lend you some clothes.

"Thank you," you whisper, and you do not say anything else and take the flashlight that hands you, timidly in your hands.

Tony raises his usual eyebrow, the one that looks more like the trigger of a gun ready to shoot you in the middle of the eyes, then twists lips.

"Our conversations will always be limited only to me talking and you responding with thank you, then later and ... my favorite one: I can not say anything , right?"

He made your imitation, and it's a Tony thing; and now you can not find it funny.

He has no idea how hard it is for you to hold your tongue down when it comes to him, with whom you've always talked about anything, really anything.

Even your most intimate fears. Even the most stupid jokes. Even the most hidden desires.

"I'm sorry ..." you say, and you bite a lip.

"I forgot I'm sorry, " he chuckles, raising his eyebrows, and it's still an attempt to make fun of you, then he sighs and scratches his head, "With the others you look much more comfortable, anyway. What's that? Do I treat you badly in the future? "

"Far from it," you reply lapidary, just because you can not say the opposite.

"So what? We do not have to talk about what you do there ... in your present . There are so many things you can discuss, no? "

You snort, and you raise your eyes to the cealing, but inside you just want him to understand: "Tony, that's not the case. Really. I'm too afraid of having to pay serious consequences ... I do not want to go home and find out that I have cracked something. "

Tony shrugs, puts his hands in the pockets of the blue striped white bomber jacket, and seems to have taken the matter too lightly.

Or, as always, he's pretending to be like that.

"I do not see anything wrong with having a chat, and it would not hurt you to get out of this prison a little."

"I'm trying not to pollute your reality, and mine too. They told me to do like this and I will do it. Do you think I would like to stay here, waiting to come back to my present, without interacting with anyone? Just ... I have to, " you whisper and have already exposed yourself too much, for your tastes.

"You do not have to, you just have to be careful!" He blurts out, as if it were the easiest thing in the world. Just because, as always, he does not know what it means to be on the other side.

He always succeeds, identifying himself in others, and you do not have to admit it.

"It's obvious that you do not know me yet," you snort, amused, finally. "I am a kind of irrepressible disaster. I would be able to create trouble even while standing still ".

"Oh, now I understand why we get along so well, in the future. We are not so different, "he sneers, with his arrogant way of doing that always hides a deep sweetness and care, at least to you.

You can not help but smile, but lower your head, because you do not want to expose more.

"Please, Peter ..." he tells you and seems to hesitate for a damn moment and, for your misfortune, that hesitation disappears in a flash. You raise your eyes on his, he smiles at you, because he knows he's caught your attention, "you do not even know how long you'll have to stay here.You do not even know if you'll come back! "

"I will return! Of course I'll be back! ", You say, annoyed, and you feel the lump in your throat blocking your breath. He seems to regret having said it, and takes a step back, metaphorically and one forward, a true one.

"Of course you'll come back but ... it could happen in a long time. You can not just wait for it. "

"I have no other choice," syllables.

One more step forward, the left hand trembling. As always. As he does every time he is nervous about something he wants to change but who knows he has to fight to do it.

"Yes, you have it! Come on, Peter! Let's try to do something and if you do not feel sure, I swear I'll disappear from your life for the next thirty years. "

He smiles. It displaces you.

You can not help doing it too. Because as always he is fighting to have you on his side, even there, even in that distant past.

How can you say no? How do you say no to someone you love so much that you do not find the somatic traits so different from those you're used to seeing usually so disturbing?

How can you not crave his company as he wants yours?

"Why exactly with me? Why me?" You say, even if you know the answer, even if you know that accepting means ending up in a lot of trouble.

He shrugs; his feigned indifference enchants you as always, because you know how much time he has lost, to mull over it.

As if he had thrown it there, but it is not like that.

Puffs amused: "Because you're not so bad".


	2. Million Reasons to Leave, Only One Reason to Stay

 

Born To Be Yours

A story about a time traveler   
•••  
 

  
  
**Chapter II -** **Million Reasons to Leave, Only One Reason to Stay**  


  

"Sometimes I wonder it"

"Is this the part where I ask you what _you_ _'re talking about?_ , right? And you answer something extremely sentimental!”, the man smiled, raising a hand to pass it through his hair with an uncalculated delicacy.

Peter Parker's face was crossed by an amused flicker, then he folded his hands on Tony Stark's chest, and he settled down with his chin.

"How you looked like at my age? I don’t  imagine you so different from now …”, he murmured, letting himself be caressed again like that, with the shivers going through his back and the warmth of his feelings to warm his cheeks.

"I was a haughty, bored, touchy city kid. Extremely hateful”, Tony said, then curled his lips and admitted," Not so different from now, yes. "

"And do  _you_ ever think about your young verion when we are together? Do I remember you a little? "

The man stopped his hand and then caressed it. He brought him closer and placed his head on his shoulder, leaving a kiss on his forehead, a gesture that Peter always connected to a sense of melancholy. As if he wanted to protect him in moments when he was more exposed and therefore vulnerable.

"No ... I was too different, Peter. I was not humble, first of all - and I'm not even now - nor so modest or quiet as you are. I was a little shit. I would have made false papers to get everything I wanted, even to lie shamelessly to anyone, no one excluded. "

"What made you change so much? You ... you're not like that, now. Not so much, at least. With me, not at all, "snapped Peter, raising an eyebrow first and then his head, looking at him, looking in his eyes for the answer, with a vein of bewilderment in his voice.

"So many things, many since I became an Avenger and ... I can’t hide that a certain change was there even when you came into my life," Tony admitted, and bent over to give him a light kiss on his lips and one one the tip of the nose.

Peter felt warmed by that gesture, and crouched more against him, but not satisfied with the answer. He wanted to give him so many questions that he was already bursting with a big headache, and he was tired, because they had been a heavy day and almost wanted to let go and sleep but ...

There was a question, only one, that just could not keep sewed in the head.

"What have I done so special?"

Tony gave a short laugh: "Go to sleep, Peter."

"No, really! I want to know it. Please, Tony! "He pleaded, sitting up slightly on the bed, instinctively. The sheet slipped from his shoulders, revealing a partial nudity that Tony looked with some interest and a certain light in his eyes.

He studied it for a few seconds, then sighed and put a hand on his cheek, getting up to sit on the mattress to get closer to his face.

"You taught me that if you love something and desire it, you have to earn it," he replied, before appropriating his lips with passion and stealing his heart, inexorably, without any difficulty for the umpteenth time.

 

...

 

"Are you listening to me?".

You jump, and you come back to reality abruptly. Your new, distant, and confusing reality.

Exactly seven days have passed since you were there, in that twisted past, and after having occupied whole afternoons to put two words on the cross with Tony - who pretended to come to the headquarters just by chance, with too obvious excuses - at the end you gave in yet another proposal to get out of there and take a walk.

Exit a cage to enter another, according to your thinking. Free yourself from the oppression of the four walls, according to his.

You lost your mind - as you walk with him through the streets of New York - far away; one of the first times you started lying to Aunt May to stay with him, your present one; to spend the whole weekend watching trash movies and making love on the sofa at home.

There are too many things you miss, of those times and too many things that embarrass you, in the innocence that the young Tony reserves to you.

«Yes, I'm sorry ... I was absorbed for a moment», you answer and you give him a smile. A futile, stupid and fleeting smile.

Tony sighs: "If you continue to concentrate not to mention your time, you'll end up doing it. Come on, try to think of it as little as possible! If you don’t stop this bullshit, i’m going mad".

You raise your shoulders, touched by his attempt to keep you entertained and have fun, but you both know that it will never go as you hope.

And the reasons are too many to get counted.

"Okay," you reply, then point to a store and he follows the trajectory of your finger intrigued. "We could jump over there. That place has space churros ".

You don’t even finish the sentence. Tony bursts out laughing, tasteful. He leans his head back, and you don’t understand.

Then you realize, and you would like to bury yourself.

"Not yet, I'm afraid. Now there's a call center for intercontinental calls! "

"Fuck!" You say, and you just got out of your mouth, that stupid imprecation that amuses the boy you have next to you.

"Don’t Worry! The only damage you could have done is that it made me curious.  _Try it again, Peter! »_ , He tells you and puts a hand on your shoulder, which makes you shiver, makes you  _transparent._ Too much to not let you understand that his touch is not indifferent to you.

Exposed. Again.  _Damn._

You look down: "I'm sorry, I didn’t want to do it. As I told you, I also manage trouble from a standstill”.

"And, as I told you, we are similar from that point of view," he says quietly, and you would like that same tranquility also belonged to you and that you stop harassing a strip of red sweatshirt,  _his_ , with so much energy almost snatch it. "Come on, let's get out of here. Come".

The air has cooled, now that the sky is dropping the sun behind some buildings, allowing the night to begin to make space.

You always have a certain effect, see the days get shorter. It seems like time is a tyrant and you want to rush, and you don't love when it happens.

"Where do you live in your present?" He asks suddenly, and you don't know what to do. As always, you don't know how much information can be harmful to what will come in the future. "I will not come looking for you, don't worry. You are not even born yet. "

"I'm from Queens," you answer and he nods.

"The accent does not lie, Peter."

"Is it really so marked?" You ask, and you laugh. Even the other Tony has pointed out to you, in some kind of occasion that you just don't remember now.

Tony chuckles: "Yeah, it is! I don't mind, though. Unlike others, that accent of Queens always sounds pleasant enough for me. "

"Thank you," you whisper, and you know you blush. And you know you did it for a stupid thing.

Tony manages to displace you there too, in that reality, with his way of telling you nice things without breaking down once. With that arrogance that is the reason why you fell in love with him.

The silence descends, still and the fleeting glance that you exchange, forces you to turn away elsewhere, pretending that attitude is not bewitching you, that you are not conquering.

He seems notice it, and stops. He stops and you don't, because the heart beats strong, because you are afraid. Because you don't want to show it.

Because you're so in love that you can’t hide it. Because every moment when you try to distance yourself, something happens and that inexorably shortens it.

"Why are you doing this?" He asks, and if you did not know him well, you would say that the annoyed tone does not mean anything. Instead it means many things, including suffering for something you hope to have misrepresented.

You stop, finally, and turn around.

"Doing what?".

"Why do you act evasively?"

"You know why. Of course, I want to be provident because I'm afraid to tell you too much and n- ".

"Bullshit" He says and stops in the bud that your attempt to hide, for the umpteenth time, behind the excuse of your present, your non-existent attention to keep everything you know, secret.

It still displaces you. Open your eyes and you just don't go on. You don't want to, because you don't know what to say, and to remain silent means to confirm that he’s right.

And he has it, and he has it.

Take a step toward you, and the smiling and carefree Tony of a little before disappears. His usual mask that tells everyone that everything is always good, collapses. It collapses even in that reality, it collapses again in front of you.

He tells you.

«You want to detach yourself! And this detachment you want only for one reason, Peter. And if the reason is not this fucking providence, as you call it, then it means that you are afraid. What am I doing so scary in the future that you have to be like this? "

"I'm not afraid of you. Never had. I'll never have it and ... please. Please, let us stop talking about the  _you_ of my present ... please. "

"So if it's not me, what's your problem, once and for all? Tell me, Peter, because if I know that we will continue to have a dialogue that is always and only one way, then I might as well stay here and take the distances you want so much . To insist on something that only me want is useless, "he tells you and continues to be right, this time only in part.

"I want it, really, I wish ... I wish it were all more natural with you, as it is in my present but ... Tony, I ... I'm afraid of  _myself_ . Only and exclusively of me », you admit, finally and you are sure, from the confused look that has thrown you, to have you displaced, this time.

"What are you afraid of ruining in the future? What are we doing so weird that can change things so much? "He asks, frustrated.

"It's complicated ... and I can not tell you. On other things I could skip, but on you ... and me, no. It's too important, I don't want to go back and find out that ... "  _I lost you._

"Agree. All right, look, let's go back. Definitely not the case to continue, if you have to be so bad. I was glad with your company, but if it's not the same for you, what can I do? "

"Why are you misrepresenting? That's not what I said. "

«It does not change the fact that between you and me there will never be a dialogue, as I had imagined ... so, let's go back just enough».

It hurts. It hurts so much that you remain dumb, and swallow a lump in your throat that looks like just the set of many sharp blades. They come down to the heart, they wound it and they break you.

The journey backwards is just the meeting of his shoulders. He don't turn around to look at you as before, trying to infuse confidence and confidence.

You feel disgusting, and maybe you only made the situation worse that you will find later. Tony is a man who does not easily forget, so he often surrounds himself with enemies and a few trusted people.

You Risk, to being no part of either category.

The arrival at the headquarters is only the balance that weighs the needle towards that unmanageable situation and, even if not having a single word, accompanies you to your room, where just before you opening the door, you turn to look at him hoping only not to see too much anger sparkle in the chestnut irises.

«Tony ...», you call him, on your lips, your forehead frowned. A boundless desire to make you an embrace and hear him says that in thirty years will be all unchanged, that when you come back the time will be as you left it.

"You are not afraid of me, you are not afraid of you either. You are afraid of  _us_ . Or not? ", He asks brusquely, and you back away. Your back meets the closed entrance of your room and you're trapped. "Or not?" He repeats, louder. He puts his hands on the door and blocks you there, forced to watch him looking for answers at any cost.

Bounce from fear; jolted because certain shots have never had them, with you. Bumping because he's right, again and again and again ...

"I'm afraid that  _we_ here can change too many things that we have earned too much effort, Tony ...", respond, tilt his head to the side, terrified, "I don't want to lose what I have ... the only certainty I have."

He comes closer, does not let you go, rather traps you still in that cage made by his arms stretched between you.

"Do you have a crush on me? For the me of the future?”

Something breaks and for once it's not your heart. It is uncertainty to crumble.

So it's all upside down, even emotions. You felt exposed and you are not anymore. You've never been, if all that he could understand from your looks is just that bland feeling. Only a ridiculous and childish infatuation? Just ... something so poor?

You raise your eyes, and you know they are burning. He thinks he has taken it, with his usual arrogance that sometimes you would like to eradicate from him because it hurts.

But this time it does not hurt. It only makes anger.

"No, Tony ... you did not understand anything at all," you tell him, simply, before turning your face to the other side and silencing you.

"So ... the certainty is not the feelings, the certainty is me,isn’t it? I spare you feeling, and there is something between us and you are afraid to not finding the same thing when you return. "

You lowered your head, hit and sunk by that truth that has understood, that has thrown on you as if it were not so important and that, inexorably, is already changing things because you, after all, you have not even tried to pretend that it is not so .

"Say something, Peter!" He says, in the tone of someone who is about to lose patience.

"What?" You hisses, and looks up at him, to strike him, to block him, to let him die in the bud of his painful intention to denigrate your future, as if it were the least important thing in the world, when the Tony of your time has always proved that you, just you, are one of the few things that make sense in his life, "What do you want me to say? That it's true? Yes it is! There is something between us, something strong, that I don't want to lose! The only fucking thing I wish would remain unchanged forever ... and you have no right to- "

A kiss. Blocking your words is his kiss, fast and lapidary given by those who are afraid of losing the courage to do it. He did it.

Time breaks, and although it is a different and inexperienced contact on his part, his lips would be recognize in every universe. His kiss is unchanged because, despite being part of a different period, he is always him. And you're still you.

You lash out at him, and you're damn foolhardy to want to deepen that union, but to move it away you would not even succeed if you were aiming a gun at you with the intent to kill you.

It's his first kiss, you feel it. Like his, in your present, was the first for you. And it's yours, that's yours.

Over time it would have belonged to someone else but not. It's yours, and you're proud of it and at the same time you feel immensely stupid to have stolen it.

You violated it, and you violated the time. You challenged it.

Your lips are divided, between the sweet sound of broken breaths that try to stop being indecent and noisy.

"I have a crush on you ..." he admits, as he loses his eyes, he looks from your soul to your mouth as if there were no rules, "And it seems that the thing is unchanged over time."

"It is ... and that's why I'm afraid. In this time ... what do you know about me? "

He seems to be displaced by that fact, because after all it is the truth. What does he know about your, if you have only avoided that he could know you so deeply that he fell into that trap too?

"Does it really matter?"

It matter. Because, in that universe, there is not the same mutual feelings.

There is only you who love him, and he who just put the first piece to start doing it. Yet here you are, looking at you as if nothing, but nothing at all, mattered more.

You smile: "No, it doesn't really matter," and it's a lie, but it's sweet like that new kiss that he asks you with his eyes, banging his long eyelashes.

It kills you inside, yet it reassures you as always; as the Tony of your present would have done.

You give it to him, that kiss, because you want it and nothing in the world, not even the fear of what will come later, persuades you from crowning that common desire.

  
 


	3. A Sign of the Time

He slipped his hand under his shirt, meeting the hardened skin - from the abdominal contracts, under the fingertips, feeling a chill behind his back to that contact; as if it were always the first, damned time.

He felt his cheeks go up in flames, even when Tony's hands touched his skin, the one under his chin, pulling the t-shirt aside to free his shoulder as much as he could.

He felt him smiling, against his hollow of his neck, puffing amused by something that Peter had almost forgotten he had on his skin, then he remembered.

"Is that what I think?" Asked the man, kissing the part he was referring to: two small holes that had now completely healed; the bite of the spider that had started the situation in which he was now, that had changed his life almost making it perfect. Damn perfect.

So much so as not to be at all.

Peter smiled, leaving him a kiss on his grizzled hair; dry jelly pinched his lips, but it was almost pleasant.

"Yes ... they look like the signs of a vampire, are not they?" He asked, forgetting that he had his legs in his, sitting astride waiting to be engulfed and become one, like every night.

"A miniature vampire, yes," Tony said, and then he gave a short laugh that faded as he looked up again at his, and their eyes met. "Did he hurt you?"

_Never like your gaze on mine ..._ Peter thought, his mouth open, still unable to get used to certain penetrating, attentive glances, full of hidden desires, in spite of the unspecified times in which he found himself having to feel them.

"Just for a moment ..."

"Then nothing?"

"Then nothing," he repeated, raising his hands to pass his fingers through his hair, to feel the strands among the phalanges melt, soften, then kissed him and got slowly undress, forgetting that sign again, for the umpteenth time, as if he did not have all that importance then, after all.

 

 

...

 

You have spent the last two weeks living; or at least to try doing it, without depriving yourself of too many things to say, as you had done before that kiss, that declaration of adolescence, that admission of a crush that he told you he has to you, who in thirty years will have the sweet and painful taste of a desperate love. Necessary. Which even transcends time, apparently.

There are things you told him, at the Tony of this time and things that you kept hidden from him, out of respect for the Tony of your present. Things that you have shared, things that you will share with each other, but it will be another Peter Parker's business. One who does not know anything yet, one who has not even been born yet.

The S.H.I.E.L.D. is hosting you now, and you only have one way to reciprocate: make yourself available for the tests they want to do to you, because you're too weird, too different, too special to leave you alone ... and you have no other way to repay them you mortify lend yourself like this, you do it.

Tony never agrees, when they call you to put you under observation as if you were a threat, or an alien came down to earth or, as he likes to call you,  _a small and helpless lab rat._

"What the fuck, Peter! Why do you always say yes? You piss me off, seriously! "He told you, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, frustrated by the fact that your date in Central Park was skipped for that reason.

You smiled, trying to reassure him, while you put on your green coat that, now, does not even make you the same bad impression as before.

"I have no other choice. They ... give me food and lodging, they don't ask questions, but they want to understand, maybe even to file somewhere who i’m. I can not say no, it would be rude. "

"Rude is to give me forfait, to allow them to analyze you and get you in a machine to study you, as if you are a kind of freak", he replied, grumbling as always, unable to admit that sometimes it is necessary pretend that things go well as they are, even if it is not.

You approached and snorted slightly. With the Tony of your present it is not always easy to discuss, but at least sometimes he seems to understand, even if he does it with incredible difficulty. With the teenager Tony it's a losing match at the start. He does not admit replies and does not admit he is wrong, even under threat.

"Do I have any other choice, Tony?" You asked him, rhetorical and he, after looking at you offended too much, snorted.

"No, you don't have it," he replied, then indicated with a theatrical gesture, "But it's not fair, here! I ... I wanted to. So come back soon or I'll go crazy. You know I'm a habit person and if I break the routine I become unbearable! "

You laughed, and you kissed him and he could not help but satisfy your need, pressing you so tightly around his arms that almost took your breath away. Pleasant, as always; lethal, addictive.

"don't go crazy," you told him, before heading for the lab. By now you know the way, and it is sad that it is so.

"It depends on you", he decided to fight back, making you laugh again and letting out a smile, light, which was nothing more than the recommendation not to leave it only too long.

 

...

 

"Goodmorning sunshine".

It is always the same, same feeling of bewilderment, when you wake up in that place you're almost used to, but that  _almost_ makes everything more complex. Every time you open your eyes and you find yourself in that world, an explosive melancholy floods you, worse than a sharp blow between the shoulder blades and, inexorably, you start pretending that everything is okay, everything is regular.

All damn normal. But it is not, and despite the smiling eyes of Tony waiting to meet your God knows how much, the abnormality of that situation will never change.

"How long have I slept?" You ask, rubbing one eye and then propping your elbows on the mattress of your bed; that awkward and hard, damn small.

"Six hours. They say that this time they are a bit exaggerated with the tests. Are you okay? "Tony tells you, and tilting his head to study you, he sits down on the mattress next to you.He almost seems not to expect anything other than that.

"I think so ... apart from the inability to operate the brain, I'm pretty fit. I guess it's too late to go to Central Park, is it? "You ask, and you're sorry. You would have liked to escape from there for even a couple of hours. Would you rather spend that time walking with that Tony, who unlike yours, has no problem holding hands in public. Indeed, it seems almost as simple as that.

You can not blame the Tony of your present, even if it is so difficult not to make comparisons sometimes; you spend too many years and, although loving a man is not wrong for either of you, but the age difference has always been a bit divided, in some cases.

You accepted it, by now, but it continues to hurt.

"For that who cares, we'll do it again tomorrow. They say that for a while they leave you alone but ... Peter, you have the analysis of a terminally ill patient and nobody can understand why. I know you will not answer me, because I'm sure you know it, but ... is it normal? "

Click on the bed, in a pure and simple attempt to reassure him and just: "It’s normal. I'm not terminal, I just ... something more that upsets my values; nothing to worry about, okay? I've always been like that, "you tell him, and he snorts slightly, but he does not stop caressing the back of yout hand with his thumb, a gesture he's been doing since he sat next to you.

"I trust you, but they're all worried. It seems there is more, but they did not want to tell me anything. "

"It's better this way, Tony ... for now, I say. It's better that you don't know and not even them », you feel like saying, and you bite a lip when he looks at you with that usual impatient and frustrated. Unable to show sympathy because, you know, it does not really go down to having to wait thirty years to meet you.

You told him so much, enough, but not too much. You exaggerated and he just can not understand it.

You're Spider-Man, okay, but what's the point of telling him now?

You feel like you are in an upside down world, even you are. In your present, what tries to stop your curiosity in the bud, it's him. Here it is all overthrown, here you are having to break up the information, and he is trying to take them out of your mouth.

You can not; would you like, but you can not and it goes too many things, it goes too much happiness that already you are no longer sure to find back on your return ... if at the end you'll come back.

You started to have some doubts about it. It's been more than a month since you've been there, and you have not even remotely felt the possibility of coming back, not even a fucking vault. Your chest hurts at the thought alone, yet a part of you knows that if you did not do it, you would not suffer as you should.

_It’s your fault, your love, your arrogance and your bad temper. I would love it all the time._ , you think, trying to take away any responsibility, while he passes a hand through your hair, perhaps unkempt, to put them back in order. As always.

Giving that gesture a care that you would not be able to give too. Perhaps not even the same importance.

"Are you angry?" You ask, just because he has hardened his jaw despite the sweet gesture he is giving you.

"No," he replies, then sighs and pinches his lips with his own. A shiver runs through your back, a heartbeat ends in nothingness; "I'm worried, and you don't tell me anything because you can not ... I just want to know, but I understand that I have no rights. Not yet".

"You understand it, but you don't accept it."

"No," he repeats and you take his hand, hoping to be able to shorten the slight distance you feel is about to creating, and that you don't want it to be amplified, rather you want it to diminish, to be canceled. "But it is so. Better than nothing, Peter, "he concludes and kisses you.

It is a rumble of feelings, a roar of strong and visceral emotions, even new ones.

No, they are not new; they are only sensations that you have not felt for a long time and that you missed and had settled inside you, in a boundless corner, waiting to be able to try them again, once tou’ll be back home.

_This is my house too_ , you think, then shake your head mentally,  _No, it's not. It is not, Peter! This is just a place to wait, which you have made too lukewarm to still believe it._

You are again crossing a line of demarcation that you should not have. A line that you had imposed to never exceed: that of desires, of passion.

You had promised yourself that you would have kept at bay the desire for intimate caresses and the warmth of your skin against his, but feel warm and you feel yourself bursting, when that kiss becomes so moist as to make your head spin; so deep you get slumped back on the mattress.

He above you, the knee between your legs, his hands clasped around your wrists, as if he needed to keep you there; as if you wanted to escape.

Absurd and ridiculous. It almost makes you laugh, think about the possibility of not letting him do everything he wants with you.

Your lips are divided like a film; slowly, tearing away that instant in which they were one. He begs for libido, swollen with absurd fantasies that are too hidden behind your eyes.

Tony pants against your mouth; his long eyelashes slam only once. He doesn’t seems to want to lose eye contact even if you ask him on his knees and, with a very painful kindness, he makes you feel confident.

"Tell me no. Tell me that now, Peter, or I can’t stop myself, "he tells you, and there is so much frustration in his voice as a growing fear. Fear of not being able to hold back, even though he received your no; afraid of disappointing you because yes, it's his first time.

You're taking that merit too, Peter ... and you're not going to take that privilege away from you and you feel like  egoist, a careless. Feelings that in your life you never even thought you could feel.

Just shut up. You pull it by the collar of the checked shirt and kiss it again.

You want to empty your mind, you want to stop thinking, and almost succeed, if only it were not for that disturbing echo that does not stop repeating the same, same sentence.

_You will regret it. You will regret it. You will regret it. Sweetly, Peter._

It is a frantic fight made of gasps and fingers tight around the hair; a fight of lips that continue to divide and enjoy themself again, of glowing eyes and burgundy cheeks.

You split again, while a trickle of saliva still holds you clinging to each other, and Tony's mouth explores something else and comes down from your chin, to your neck, and then your shoulders and every touch is a hot saliva bath , then stops.

"What is it?" He asks, and time stops scanning its course; even the sighs almost become nothing.

You open your eyes, you put a hand on your forehead. You look on the ceiling;  _He found it._

"It’s the reason why you'll know me," you tell him, then shudder, when his hand slips under your shirt to caress you with a disarming care and a decadent sensuality. Suffering.Inexperienced, but unique.

Tony leaves a kiss on the scar, then another and another; he is thanking it, maybe. He is reserving a kind of respect, almost unsettling.

And you are there, poised, to hold back moans of pleasure and a boundless sadness at the thought of having disappointed the time and breaking the rules, again. With the feeling of having something to heal. Not in that time, not in that context.

You roll the situation up, because you just want to stop thinking. 

The salts straddling your legs, and when Tony sits up to shorten the distance between your looks, you put his fingers in his hair and kiss him passionately.

His hands are on your back, to caress it like the strings of a violin, as if your vertebrae were the ivory keys of an ancient piano. The same touch, identical, made of the same care and the same passion that would also use the man who is waiting for you in your present.

Your own, same supplication in the eyes of having more, of feeling more, of sharing more.

More lips, more looks, more breaths, more skin.

Every restrained moan is a death sentence, a blade that mows the freedom you are taking in two. Yet it is so sweet, so wonderful, so pleasant to make you cry from pleasure.

The soft light outlines every shape; hands intertwine, souls pure.

The feeling is like touching the sky with a finger, but you know for sure that when all of this ends, the abrupt reality of the facts will come back to crush you, because you know you acted with too much instinct, at the exact moment when you should not have done it.

You'll have to deal with too many things at your return; things bigger than you. Things you don't even know how to repair.

Now it does not matter. After all, it never mattered.

On the ground, thrown away without a minimum of care, a pile of clothes, including a garment in particular that stands out among all. A red sweatshirt.

_His._

 


	4. Chapter 4

Epilogue- I'm Sorry for Everything I've Done

  
  
  
He felt the boundless chasm of death beneath his feet; like an open trapdoor, like a sudden hole popped up in the ground. He struggled to avoid being swallowed, while other people around him shattered into small pieces, too small to be reassembled.  
  
The feeling of dying, he had imagined different. Above all, he would never have believed that he would perceive it minutes before.  
  
He only looked up, having long looked at his trembling hands, and then turned to Tony.  
  
Tony, _damn it_ , turned away to see Strange disappears and then he turned to him.  
  
"I don’t feel so good".  
  
His wide open eyes pierced him worse than a blade stuck in the flesh and the fear of dying became the fear to leaving him alone, that strong but fragile man.  
  
"Peter ..." Tony called him, and it was just another reason to unbalance awkwardly towards him, because peter’s legs were trembling too much to do so in a stable, straight way.  
  
He let himself fall into his arms, crying all the possible tears, perhaps the only ones left in that weak body.  
  
"I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go ... please!" He begged him, and Tony only managed to raise his hands to take his head and caress hir, convinced that this gesture might be able to avoid that inexorable separation , also with him. Trembling like a leaf, finished like a dead man.  
  
"You'll be fine, don't ... you'll be fine," the man replied, and Peter didn't believe it, but it was almost reassuring, somehow, though he had told him in a voice that was trembling with a supplication stronger than his own. .  
  
He felt the body lose consistency; he felt fragmented into many, small pieces of flesh and soul, then dragged a few words from his mouth, managing to say only one thing that really mattered, at that moment as in no other.  
  
"I'm sorry" _to leave you alone_.  
  
  
...  
  
  
It is the garden of S.H.I.E.L.D. to make you a cradle; a boundless container of brown and yellow leaves and almost bare trees, but it also contains you.  
  
His scent envelops you with every hug, and Tony has gone beyond all limits of affection, in that orange afternoon of that day at the end of autumn. His feeling for you has grown even more in those past two weeks - after having made love for the first time, for you the umpteenth time, with a different him but still the same - and it is more and more like what puts the Tony of your present in your heart every time the sky wants you together.  
  
There is a light and reassuring warm breeze, to cradle you. Something that is too reminiscent of the day you arrive, and perhaps it is not even a coincidence that there is this similarity today.  
  
Melancholy, sadness and a sense of emptiness almost unbridgeable, in the heart, but you don't want it to know. You've thought about it so much, and as it should be aware of it, of your black evil, you've finally decided to pretend it's just a day like any other.  
  
«What do you want me not to do in your present, not to hurt you?», He asked you yesterday, before you making love once again; after having loosened the knots between your eyes and having them tied between your fingers, unable to divide even when you are far away.  
  
You requested more lips, before answering. You took time, you tried to think, without giving to see that you were doing it, that you needed it, then you curled the lower lip, you bit it and you said that phrase taken for granted.  
  
"I want you to be yourself. I would not change anything that happened between us ... "but it is not true; there are so many things you would not have heard from that sometimes venomous mouth of him, sometimes unable to understand you. You would like to tell him not to treat you like a kid, when he should do it. You would like to tell him that you don't like to see him slip out of your hands, when there are other people and he must pretend that you are nobody. He succeeds too well, so good that it hurts too much.  
  
"I'm sure it's not like that," he told you. He knows. He knows exactly what mistakes he will make, and in his ingenuity he doesn't yet know them all. It doesn't have to, it's not right.  
  
"It doesn’t matter, for me ... and making mistakes is part of the game," and you were also talking about yourself. Above all of you, especially now that you have made the most unjust decision of your whole existence, though against your will.  
  
  
"Why do you start to think about things and ignoring me?", he asks you and you are back to reality, in the garden of SHIELD; with him sitting with his back against a tree and you in front of him, your shoulder blades against his chest, cradled by a hug that surrounds your shoulders.  
  
"Because they are foolish things," you tell him, and smile slightly, because you know he doesn't believe you, because he knows you enough now ... so much that he lets it run, and pretends not to have understood anything.  
  
"Are you afraid of my judgment?" He asks, and you know he has raised his usual, predictable disenchanted eyebrow.  
  
You puff amused: «I'm afraid of mine».  
  
"Today you're strange. More than usual, I mean, "he points out, unable to speak seriously, when it means to expose himself and he never likes, that he should do it. Imagine yourself.  
  
"It's autumn’s fault ... it blows me with all the energy, sometimes. I feel weak, maybe I have a fever, "minds.  
  
Tony raises a hand to gently place it on your forehead; a thoughtful and almost mechanical gesture, which you would have done even if the roles had been reversed.  
  
"Nah, you're just weird. You don't have a fever. Did I say something that hurt you, Peter? "He asks and leaves you a light kiss in his hair; maybe two, maybe three, maybe fifty. You are too focused not to lose yourself, to pay attention, even if that care means the world for you.  
  
"No, no. Seriously ... you didn't say anything! "  
  
"Look, I don't like to insist but ... with me you can talk, you know! I will not have the sweetest and most sympathetic character of the earth, but with you ... _damn it, how difficult it is_ , "he snorts, and he feels him recline his head against the trunk of the tree and fall silent.  
  
You know. You know it's difficult for him to bring down that wall built by a false indifference and detachment from everything that allows you to pass as if you were a ghost.  
  
Only you, you can. Always and only you.  
  
You turn around and face him. You Cross your legs on the ground, stretch the sleeves of the red sweatshirt, his, to hide the trembling hands. Smile, to conceal a secret and then approach the face to his to kiss his lips, with a fleeting and painful touch.  
  
"No need, I'm fine. You didn't do anything, it's just me that sometimes I remember not belonging to this time and ... I feel divided in half ».  
  
"Where I am, you're never out of place, Peter," he tries to reassure you, frowning, as if your confidence, true in part, is ridiculous in his ears.  
  
You melancholy giggling, then lower your head: "It's easy to say, even to believe but it's not always like that ... sometimes you don't have the strength to really believe it."  
  
Tony is silent for seconds, maybe whole minutes. His gaze on yours, to pierce the flesh, kills you. He doesn't know what to say, and you know it. He doesn't have one of his phrases to blurt out as if, after all, nothing had as much importance as you think.  
  
"I understand ... sorry if I insisted," he tells you, and the times when you heard that word are so rare - _sorry_ , you come back to look at him; smile, tenderly, and shake your head.  
  
"don't apologize, but ...", you begin, and you bite a lip, and it hurts your chest and head and hands and fingers, especially it hurts your heart. Beats loud, very strong, and it's not love this time, not even happiness ... it's fear, it's awareness and the inability to change things, of which you're plunged in the most horrid part of your soul. "Tony, I don't feel so good"  
  
It's a choked, broken tone, the one you used. A different tone, an exposed tone that lets your attempt to pretend that there is  really nothing to worry about.  
  
_I don't want to go, I don't want to go, I don't want to go!_ , you bounce in your head and would like to cover your ears with your hands, if only you know how it is useless to stop a flow of thoughts only with a stupid gesture like that .  
  
He doesn't seem to understand, but maybe he understood. He swallows; his Adam's apple moves slowly, with the sole intent of not letting you know that he just wants it not to be what he thinks.  
  
"Do you want to rest? Let's go to rest! You could have said that, I certainly would not have said no! "  
  
«No, Tony ... I know, but ...», you start and stand up. With a dry gesture of the hands you remove the fragments of earth and dry leaves attached to the knees, in the pure and useless attempt to take time. "don't get angry but ... I'd like to sleep a little, and I'd like to do it by myself, alone."  
  
Tony stands up, then. He faces you, he takes you by the shoulders. The hardened jaw that blocks so many, too many questions. Uncomfortable questions for both; questions that would leave too much impact on the reality of the facts.  
  
"It's ... it's happening now, is not it? You're too weird, "he tells you, and the question failed to keep him between his teeth.  
  
"No. No, no, no! ». you exclaim, and try to reassure him, to convince him to believe the umpteenth lie. "I just want to rest."  
  
He nods; hesitates, he takes your cheeks with your hands, then hesitates again and finally kisses you.  
  
An immense passion, enclosed in a bubble of terror ready to dissipate in the wind, and in your mouth, which says too much but too little. That tells you, in a devastating cry, I'm not ready for all this.  
  
You're not either, you've never been and you've never pretended to be.  
  
You cling to his back, fingers closing in the thick fabric of his blue striped white bomber jacket. Let slip saliva and lips between his, in a desperate attempt to tell him that you are about to leave him alone once again.  
  
"See you later," you say, when you break away; after he having spent countless minutes studying your soul from your eyes, lost in a time that is neither part of the present nor of the past. It is static, and you would like it to be infinite, but infinite is not.  
  
«Yes», he simply tells you, and you overtake him, go over him and go away. His eyes on his back and don't just look at you because you'd like another kiss, maybe another hundred, but it's too late. You would never do it in time.  
  
Time , let it be cursed.  
  
Run to your room; open the door with a difficulty that never belonged to you, just because your eyes are too blurry with panic to see what you're doing.  
  
You close the door behind you and lean your back. The breath is cut off, between the palate and the teeth.  
  
You look at your hands and small pieces of you are lost in the air, in the silence of your room, with a warmth in your heart that has nothing beautiful but not even so terrible.  
  
You're fading, again. Your senses have predicted it once again, and you can not do a damn thing. You hate them, you hate them with all of yourself and it makes you angry, too much. And, although your desire to come home is finally coming true, you're less enthusiastic than you should and are not ready.  
  
You've never been ready.  
  
You don't want to die again.  
  
  
  
  
...  
  
  
There is total darkness, behind your closed eyes, and yet it doesn't stop you from feeling around your hand, other fingers that hold it gently but tremble.  
  
Clear your eyelids, trying to overcome that immense sleep in which you are barricaded, because if you have disappeared on one side, it is not said that you have returned exactly where you want.  
  
"Peter?".  
  
That call is like a bomb, a gun that suddenly fires two centimeters from your ear and instinctively open your eyes and you sniff the air. The lungs are filled again, but remain in apnea for a few seconds, before realizing and bursting into tears, for so many reasons that now escape you.  
  
All legitimate, all painful.  
  
Tony is there; still, motionless, sitting on the mattress next to you, and no longer holds your hand, suddenly.  
  
Graying hair is pulled up with jelly, but doesn't seem to be cured in its usual way. It must be late, very late, because his tired face tells you this, because behind his eyeglasses his need for rest is palpable, but not necessary. Not now.  
  
The face marked by time confirms your return, but you're still staring at him while he does the same. Not the same way, not with the same intention.  
  
Behind that look, there is nothing. Nothing at all.  
  
Neither love, nor sadness, nor anger, nor happiness. Anything.  
  
A wall two meters high, which divides you as if you, after all, were no one.  
  
Suddenly, perhaps, you're not anymore. You were, of course. You've been important, maybe he missed you just two seconds ago, but now? What is different in his eyes, which has now moved to another place, with the sole intention of not meeting yours? As if it pretended not to have you in front of you, but you know that unfortunately it is so.  
  
It hurts so much. It hurts as if dying twice was not even enough. It hurts to such an extent that you begin to tremble, and the only desire, as stupid as you are, is to go back again and put things back in their place.  
  
Now in vain.  
  
You have the same person in front of you, thirty years older, who escapes in the childish way he would have done with him when he was eighteen. A mixture of personalities, kept glued together by your fucking indifference to the rules.  
  
Hard rules, that if you break them you put yourself against the whole world and you, now, you have it in front of you, your world. Turned the other side, which finds much more interesting to look at the clock hanging on the wall that punctuates its time, rather than your face corroded and broken by feelings of guilt and pain.  
  
Open your mouth, because you want to say something. You want to do it, you have to do it or you will lose it under every front and you don't want to go back to being anybody for him. don't accept it, it goes with what is for you the concept of living life.  
  
What to say, after all? Anything is just the flame that ignites a fuse ready to explode and see its profile, hardened by the tight jaw, forces you to do the same with yours.  
  
You fall down, lower your eyes. Meet the white light blue color of the sheets that cover only the legs. You don't even know how you got there, there. Did he bring you? What questions ... it is obvious that this is so.  
  
He did this before realizing that you are just the umpteenth person who disappointed him. You, Peter ...  
  
"Maybe it would have been better if I had stayed there ... I just messed up and maybe you needed me at the time," you say and you feel damn stupid; it seems like a sentence so prone to victimization, but it is not. It's just a mere awareness, of which you're not even so sure.  
  
Tony sighs. don't look at you but look down on their moccasins. He raises a hand and passes it through his hair, then he is silent and nothing returns to fill the air.  
  
"I always need you, Peter. At all times ", he says, after having been silent for too long.  
  
"Then why don't you look at me?" You ask. Frowning eyebrows, the desire to tighten and apologize for the mistakes you've made, even if you know you've only created a split between you. A gap destined to grow, at every jolt.  
  
Tony sighs again; place his elbows on your knees and cross hishands together. He curls his lips, tightens his eyes.  
  
He lacks courage when he does that. He misses the balls to say that thirty years have dampened everything, slowly, because waiting so much means losing the desire to do so and love vanishes, inexorably.  
  
"Because that day in the past I understood, and I didn't do anything to change things," he tells you. "Because when you disappeared, then in the future, I knew it would happen, and I could not avoid it anyway."  
  
No.  
  
You did everything wrong. You were wrong to interpret why you did it with the arrogance of believing that you were wrong; to have ruined something because you had decided not to give yourself a brake.  
  
No.  
  
You were wrong in two, as always, as you do in love. You are never wrong alone. Never.  
  
"In that past I didn't tell you that I was disappearing ... because I would not have known what to tell you, because I didn't have the courage. How could I have told you that we would meet again after thirty years ... » You get up on your knees on the mattress and bend over it. You hug his back, your arms tight around his neck, your chin resting on his head. The scent of his jelly inebriates you for a few seconds, "In our present ... only the senses have anticipated me a few minutes what was happening but ... how could you have avoided it, even if I couldn’t do it?".  
  
"I couldn’t, I know. I knew it for thirty years, even though I was not aware of how and when it would happen. I had promised myself that I would simply let time take its course, because I already knew too much, but I thought I was ready. I was not. I was not at all, Peter, and if it were to happen again, I would not be even now. I would never be. "    
  
He sighs. Raise his arms and takes your hands. He holds them in his and they tremble too much.  
  
"I am here with you. You waited for me, didn't you? "You say to him, with a smile that widens against his hair, that cancels the tears, finally, and also that sense of abandonment that for a moment almost tore you apart. Divided into two. Broken.  
  
"I brought you back," he corrects you, and the awareness of that love floods you. He didn't just wait, he also acted. Waiting was you alone; that man, instead, to get back with you did everything possible, so much that you're not sure you could have done the same, in the same case.  
  
Rotate your torso towards you, and you take off from that embrace to receive a total from him, which engulfs you, touches your soul, tightens your heart and heals it. Put his on yours, and beat together again. They become one.  
  
"My red sweatshirt," he murmurs, as he grazes your neck slowly, before putting his hand under the hole in the shirt to caress your shoulder. A gesture that makes you shiver to the tip of your hair.  
  
Close your eyes and bow your back a little, inebriated by that touch, especially when his lips are resting on your cheekbone and trace its hardness with some weak kiss.  
  
"I wear it more than I should have," you reply, her mouth crossed by an amused twist.  
  
Tony moves his face in front of yours. Your eyes finally meet, and you lose yourself with a simplicity that disarms.  
  
"I always thought it was better on you than on me, Spider-Man ."  
  
He takes your chin between thumb and forefinger, lifts it up to him, and waits no more time.  
  
He kisses you. He kisses you with concern. No impulse given by the passion or the enthusiasm of having you there, only a quiet demonstration that time has challenged you, but you have won and the calm that you are granting is your reward.  
  
Caress a cheek, meeting the rough surface of the beard always well-groomed under the fingertips; the holes of some scar caused by the razor, on those mornings when he was less attentive than usual.  
  
You allow yourself to be completely wrapped up in that love that you soon hoped to feel like a reassuring blanket on a cold autumn day.  
  
"Was it so painful to wait for so long?"  
  
«An agony», he replies, lapidary. It leaves you a kiss under your chin. You swallow, and sigh between your teeth, after a shiver. "As much as waiting for you after your disappearance, knowing that you were with another me ... of which I am stupidly jealous rotten."  
  
You puffs amused, while he continues to study your skin with his lips: "Jealous of you?".  
  
"Damn jealous," he murmurs softly, in a whisper that flaps like the wings of a butterfly in your ear.  
  
"I will not let you wait any longer, Tony. I promise, with all of myself, I will not do it again. I will not allow it, "you say, and for a moment you're Spider-Man again. Resolute, sure of you, even convinced that you will have the necessary strength to not allow that separation to repeat itself.  
  
Tony laughs slightly, at your almost authoritative tone but is not making fun of you. It looks more like a challenge, and when you throw weight on the mattress above you and holding you wrists so you can’t run away - in a deja-vu already seen with his younger - you have confirmation that the intention is precisely that .  
  
"It doesn't matter, Peter. You can disappear as long as you want, I will always bring you back, "he says, with that arrogant tone you missed a little before kissing and letting all the rest slip away in a corner. Just for a while. You know that calm will not last forever.  
  
But you're at home, for now this counts. You're with him, and it's like you never left.  
  
You have a wounded heart, waiting to let the time - still him - slowly take care of everything that burns, until it is totally healed.  
  
You like to think it's like that, even if it hurts.  
  
No.  
  
It doesn't matter, you're with him, only this counts and you're his.  
  
You were born to be his.  
  
  
...  
  
  
In a different time, punctuated by other hands, Tony Stark had stopped in the middle of a colorful park in autumn, while the glass door closed after letting Peter Parker run away, who had been drowned him with lies.  
  
He felt like a fool because he understood it, what was happening, but he had been too cowardly to admit it, because perhaps in his heart he would rather not know.  
  
He bit his lip, letting a frustrated, weary sound of himself and of his arrogant, even delicate moments, appear in his teeth, whose final decision weighs too heavily on the heart.  
  
He took a deep breath, shrugging as if in an infinite slow motion, then he moved. He strode up to the glass door and flung it open, without any care in closing it behind him.  
  
Run, run, run, more than he could. Maybe it was still in time, maybe he could still tell him all the things he wanted in those days he had hoped could become infinite. More than once, selfishly, he had even hoped that Peter could stay there forever with him.  
  
He faced the door of Peter's room, hesitating a moment before starting to knock as if, behind it, there was the only thing that was worth more than anything else; and maybe it was like that.  
  
He knocked for a while, maybe too much. Red knuckles, hot hands. Then he opened the door wide and found the emptiness there.  
  
He knew. He knew it and hoped it was not like that. He knew it and had done nothing, nor said anything about it.  
  
He closed the door behind him when he finally entered and slumped to the ground, instinctively punching the ground and didn't give a damn about the pain. It didn't matter. That would have passed.  
  
He sighed and leaned his forehead against the frozen floor, his fists clenched around nothingness.  
  
The clock that gave birth to its infinite expectation that would have united them again, shot its first second; the first of many, many others.  
  
He would have waited, yes. He would do it.  
  
It was almost a lifetime, but it would be worth it.  
  
For Peter it was always worth it.  
  
 

THE END


End file.
